


(500) days of Charlotte

by craicslave



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Death, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craicslave/pseuds/craicslave





	(500) days of Charlotte

Day 1:  
She looked at him today. She never had before. Usually she passed his desk with no sign of noticing anyone sitting behind it. He was trying to be smooth and dismiss her glance. Instead he ended up knocking his cup of tea and spilling its content on his keyboard. He hated himself.

Day 4:  
Today she stopped and asked him about his computer. Her voice was far more fair than he would have ever imagined and he choked. Her face turned as red as her hair when Niall didn’t answer. She hurried away. Tomorrow, he decided he was going to ask her out, he couldn’t embarrass himself much further.

Day 7:  
He still hadn’t asked her out. Every time he stopped her he got mesmerised by her beauty and came back with no success. Even when she was dressed in a too large knitwear and chugging tea out of a chipped cup he couldn’t seem to approach her. He never had this problem before. There was something different about this girl.

Day 13:  
There was a Christmas party at the office. Niall wasn’t particularly fond of parties and hurried out as soon as the room got tipsy. Charlotte joined him in the elevator. She asked him out for a drink in the pub nearby. He accepted. He would never say no to a cold pint after a hard day at work. They didn’t talk much. She wiggled her iPod out of her pocket and handed him and earplug. Niall didn’t pay much attention to the music, instead he concentrated on her freckled nose and sweet perfume that reminded him of Valentine chocolates. His cheeks turned rosy when he noticed she saw him looking. He asked her on a date by writing it down on a napkin. Her cheeks turned a shade deeper than his and she nodded.

Day 29:  
His touch melted into her skin. She was absolutely beautiful. The smoothness of her inner thigh brushed against his hipbone. He pushed in. She breathed out.

Day 49:  
This was their third date. Much like the previous ones they were quiet. Niall never was quiet before. He was different around her. After the restaurant they went home to her and she surprised him with a greasy burger she knew he preferred to the fancy restaurant food.

Day 50:  
She knew she wasn’t beautiful. Just above her left eyebrow she had a bald spot because of scar tissue that had formed when her hair dresser was talking on the phone and lost the grip of the iron curler. At age 12 she broke her nose but couldn’t dare tell her parents, when her parents noticed and took her to the hospital the doctor said the bone had healed already. In woodshop she sliced a large part of the skin on her finger which grew deformed. She had a small birthmark on her body she didn’t like. Her hips were way to broad for her height and no matter how much she exercised she could never get a flat stomach. She hated her legs, they were way to large and the scars on her knees were more than embarrassing to explain.

Day 75:  
His hands moved up her thighs and rested on the end of her back. His fingers left trails of goosebumps as they moved up. She closed her eyes and arched her neck as he kissed it. They were in love.

Day 86:  
They spent the day in bed just looking at each other. He could see she was in pain but neither of them knew why. The soft kisses on her collarbones that used to make her smile now made her body tense up and her ribcage seemed too tender to even support her own skin. Something was terribly wrong and Niall stayed in bed with her.

Day 90:  
The doctor called.

Day 97:  
It was cancer.

Day 104:  
She allowed herself to cry today. Her body shook with anger, frustration, and most of all grief. Niall stood outside the apartment door but she wouldn’t let him in. He didn’t leave until she stopped crying and he could hear her feet drag back to her bed.

Day 109:  
She let Niall sleep on the couch.

Day 119:  
She came back in to work to say her goodbyes to her coworkers. Niall hurried to her side. She didn’t say anything to him. He didn’t say anything to her. They were far more comfortable in the quiet to ruin it with words. He sat with her as she waited for Mr Bates to call her in. He sat with her when he dismissed her resignation. And he sat with her through the heartfelt hugs and pitiful goodbyes. He was going to sit this out with her.

Day 128:  
Money had been tight for him because of all the sick days he had taken. Charlotte asked him to move in.

Day 134:  
Puke splashed into the water in the toilet. Niall was fumbling with his phone to call in sick before he even knew what was happening. He rushed to the toilet and held her hair back as her hands grabbed the rink tighter. This far in he knew better than to comfort her or to hold her hair longer than needed. Every touch pained her. She knew he wanted her to feel all right so she extended her hand to him and let him lead her back to bed. They spent the day falling in and out of sleep until Niall decided it was time to eat.

Day 135:  
When Charlotte woke up today she knew it was going to be her last. She smiled when she saw Niall’s nostrils flare as he snored and his natural brown hair growing out. He looked like a proper man. She wished she had parents to take him home to.  
When he woke up she told him she wanted a proper English breakfast and hurried him to the kitchen. He reminded her he was Irish but she stuck her tongue out and told him to make it work. He couldn’t stop smiling when he saw her gulping down her food. She begged him to talk about anything and sat with toast and beans in her mouth concentrating on his pronunciation of words.

She kissed him twice without wincing in pain and he dared to put his arms around her. Her energy drained short after and she went to lay in the sofa. They could both feel what was coming, it lay in the air like a cloud on a rainy day, heavy.

After tidying up in the kitchen he came in to the living room. She sat up and let him hold her in his arms. She told him she had to go to sleep now. He nodded and told her he knew. She placed soft kisses on his damp cheeks and rested her forehead on the side of his nose. She closed her eyes and put her head down on his shoulder breathing heavily on his neck. She said that he should be happy for her because there would be no more pain. Tears streamed down his face as he repeatedly confessed his love for her until she said she loved him too. Those were her last words before hear heartbeat slowed down and she fell asleep. It wasn’t until half an hour into her sleep her pulse stopped completely. She had dreamt of him in her last minutes. Niall holding her. He was holding her as she was being robbed of everything that made her human, everything that kept her breathing. The songs that stuck in her head. The chapter of Charlie’s realisation to what he was subject to as a child in her favourite book. The sensation brought on by Niall’s lips on her body. When all of that was gone she was an empty vessel. There was no need to breath any longer and she let go.

Day 143:  
The funeral had been held a week after her death. Charlotte didn’t have anyone so it was only him, a couple of her work colleagues, and the priest. The ceremony seemed to take hours and Niall occupied himself by reviewing new statistics on his phone. After the casket was lowered and prayers were said he hurried to his car and drove to the office. He stayed there for three days, working hard without a lick of sleep.

Day 200:  
Niall was given a promotion and a big office for himself. Nowadays he buried himself in work during the weekdays and drowned in alcohol on the weekends. He was never home. It wasn’t his home. His home was with Charlotte and Charlotte was dead.

Day 229:  
Someone came by and claimed to have been Charlotte’s college friend. She didn’t take too well to the news and Niall didn’t make any attempt to comfort her so he left the sobbing woman to herself in the cafeteria. People looked at him but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel anything at all.

Day 298:  
He started seeing her face at every street corner, every laugh on the street reminded him of her, and everyone on the train had her face. It wasn’t a vision that blurred away when he concentrated his gaze. He was going mad. She would beg him to talk to her when he was alone in his office. She teased him about his accent and how he had become a snobby white collar worker, but he drew the line when she told him he loved her. He grabbed the computer screen and threw it at the corner of the room where she was standing He knew he loved her. But he didn’t want to be reminded of his feelings.

Day 307:  
He stopped sleeping. Instead of sleep he would swallow two sleeping pills with a glass of whiskey to knock himself out. His back was in constant pain from sleeping on the sofa or on the floor. The bed was still in the same mess they left 6 months ago. It started to smell in the room but he wouldn’t alter anything.

Day 318:  
The lump in his throat became harder to swallow and his jaw muscles were tired of constantly being gritted tightly. His dentist ordered him to wear a night guard but he couldn’t find a place to put it in the bathroom so he threw it away.

Day 345:  
Alcohol didn’t seem to dull his feelings anymore. He spent more time at home than he did at work. No matter how busy or drunk he was she would always be there next to him. He was only alone in his sleep. He liked sleeping. It was pitch black and quiet. Almost like death.

Day 392:  
She sat on the sofa. He rested his scorching forehead on the cold window. She told him to sleep in their bed tonight but he wouldn’t. He didn’t sleep at all that night.

Day 405:  
His friends had an intervention for him. They had snuck into the apartment and tidied up the place. He knocked one of them out and threw a few more punches for touching his and Charlotte’s things. They left. No one called him anymore. No one cared about him anymore. No one wanted him anymore.

Day 412:  
After a scolding from the CEO he started working hard again. His job became once again an escape. He still refused to sleep in his bed but had agreed with Charlotte to get a mattress. She would lie next to him at night. Tell him stories about herself. Ask him about his job. Give him hints to how to go about his work. He would ignore her and chug down his pills.

Day 470:  
People started telling him it had gone way too long for him to still be grieving for knowing someone for such a short while. They didn’t know those 135 days he had spent with Charlotte were the best days of his life. He had never loved someone like he loved Charlotte.

Day 490:  
His blue eyes had almost lost their colour. The blond tinge in his hair was gone and it had grown so much he could almost have it in a tie. The sleep deprivation and sorrow made his glowing complexion a dull hue. He wasn’t Niall anymore.

Day 491:  
The one year mark for Charlottes death was closing in. Niall had already emptied out the minibar he had put in his office.

Day 492:  
He wanted her to appear. She didn’t. So he started talking about them. He told her how much he loved her N-shaped birthmark on the side of her body. She had told him it was because she was his. He talked about how he hated her music taste and could never bring himself to start the reading list she wrote to him on their second date. He talked about how he hated her fear for animals. He talked about how he loved when she would wake up in the middle of the night and flick the lights on to fall back asleep. And he continued to talk about all the little things that made her _his_ Charlotte. It seemed ridiculous to talk into the thick air of the apartment but he was desperate to see her face outside of his head. She didn’t come.

Day 493:  
When he got back home from work he heard her distant voice in the apartment. He hurried to unlock the door but the key jammed. So he knocked down the door. She was gone.

Day 494:  
It was time he changed the sheets. For hygienic reasons. Of course.

Day 495:  
Today he stayed home to clean the house. He returned the glasses she had put on when sunlight shone through their thin curtains and she wanted to sleep. He put back her sneakers that were lying by the bed. He closed her closet door. He vacuumed, scrubbed, and mopped every inch of their flat. Maybe Charlotte would come back if the place was a little bit cleaner. She did hated untidiness.

Day 496:  
He dared slip into their bed. The night was spent in twists and turns. His back wasn’t used to the comfortability the bed offered. It was less painful than he had imagined it would be. He fell asleep smiling and with no pills. Him and Charlotte had shared so many good memories in this cotton island he couldn’t hold them all back. They crept up his toes and he tried to shake them off but then the memories only became more vivid and he didn’t dare move in case he would make them disappear.

Maybe he was going to be all right.

Day 497:  
He called the lads over to apologise for the busted lips and Louis’ blackout when they had snuck into his apartment a while back. His throat choked on his tears and he wouldn’t meet their eyes. They kept quiet until he got it all out then they started making jokes and asked if they could put their feet up on the table. He didn’t mind anymore. Charlotte didn’t live in the things she had touched and made but through the impressions she had left on people.

He was on the way to being all right.

Day 498:  
After his friends left he started reading one of her many books. He continued throughout the day only leaving the couch to make tea or food. There were a lot of breaks.

He was kind of all right.

Day 499:  
He was knees deep in work when he realised what tomorrow marked. The shock gripped his heart and muted a beat. No one asked any questions when he left work when he actually ended and not later for the first time in a long while. He raced through the traffic to the cemetery and didn’t stop hurrying until he was standing in front of her gravestone. There he was, sweating, and heaving, and with no roses. He kneeled before the black block of granite and pressed his lips to the cool surface. He had never lost someone and didn’t know what the normal thing was so he put his palms together and started praying. Prayers turned into pleas which became thanks and ended with confessing his love to every bit of her before he rested his back on the stone.

It became late.

Then it became very late and it was no longer 364 days after Charlottes death.

Day 500:  
She had died on a normal day and today was as normal as any. Leaves rustled in their branches and birds slept in their nests and kids were being dared into entering the graveyard when it ticked past midnight. He liked that she had died on a normal day. She had been so different to anyone he had ever met it was nice that there was something human to her.

He was all right.


End file.
